Emergency 911 services have traditionally been performed by a user placing a telephone call to “911.” Prior to mobile communications developing, users would dial “911” on landlines, and the public switched telephone network (PSTN) would route the call to a public safety answering point (PSAP) local to a street address of the landline telephone used to place the call.
With mobile and wireless telephones, the address of a user in an emergency call is unknown. To determine the address or location of the caller, various techniques for determining geographic positioning of the caller are performed, including using global positioning system (GPS) equipment and network assisted positioning by using triangulation, as performed by a communications network. The communications network identifies the emergency “911” call and, based on the location of the caller, routes the call to a local PSAP with respect to the location of the caller. Depending on the technology used by the PSAP, geographic coordinates may be sent to the PSAP. If the PSAP is configured with enhanced “911” or E-911 Phase II, then a local automatic location identification (ALI) database may be used to convert the geographic coordinates to address-based coordinates.
As mobile telecommunications have advanced, different forms of data messaging communications have been developed, including text messaging, instant messaging, photo messaging, and video messaging. To accommodate these new forms of communications, a few PSAPs have advertised specific telephone numbers that users can send a text message, for example, to notify emergency services of an emergency. The problem is that unless a user has saved the emergency telephone number in his or her mobile device, the user is unlikely to remember the telephone number or not have time to enter the telephone number during an emergency situation. Furthermore, if the user has traveled any sufficient distance from a PSAP that has a specific telephone for sending text messages, then the PSAP is no longer local to the user. PSAPs, especially those in metropolitan areas, can be overloaded with emergency calls, which causes people with emergencies to have to wait to speak with an operator.